Nicholas Maxwell – författare

This provocative and challenging book questions how people think about what universities should seek to do and how they should respond to the grave problems of our age. It addresses issues such as:

With contributions from leading experts in various fields Wisdom in the University is essential reading for all those interested in the future of universities and philosophy of education.

This book was previously published as a special issue of London Review of Education

This provocative and challenging book questions how people think about what universities should seek to do and how they should respond to the grave problems of our age. It addresses issues such as:

With contributions from leading experts in various fields Wisdom in the University is essential reading for all those interested in the future of universities and philosophy of education.

This book was previously published as a special issue of London Review of Education

In order to make progress towards a better world we need to learn how to do it. And for that we need institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us solve our global problems, make progress towards a better world. It is just this that we lack at present. Our universities pursue knowledge. They are neither designed nor devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle global problems — problems of living — in more intelligent, humane and effective ways. That, this book argues, is the key disaster of our times, the crisis behind all the others: our failure to have developed our institutions of learning so that they are rationally organized to help us solve our problems of living — above all, our global problems. Having universities devoted almost exclusively to the pursuit of knowledge is a recipe for disaster. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how have unquestionably brought great benefits to humanity. But they have also made possible — even caused — our current global crises, above all the impending crisis of global warming. In this lucid and provocative book, Nicholas Maxwell argues convincingly that we need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities round the world so that their basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge.

This book is about education, learning, rational inquiry, philosophy, science studies, problem solving, academic inquiry, global problems, wisdom and, above all, the urgent need for an academic revolution. Despite this range and diversity of topics, there is a common underlying theme. Education ought to be devoted, much more than it is, to the exploration real-life, open problems; it ought not to be restricted to learning up solutions to already solved problems - especially if nothing is said about the problems that provoked the solutions in the first place. A central task of philosophy ought to be to keep alive awareness of our unsolved fundamental problems.

The essays in this volume seek to provoke a concerted effort to transform our institutions of learning so that they become rationally and effectively devoted to helping us learn how to create a wiser world.

Our most serious problems of living are so grim, so imbued with suffering, wasted lives and unnecessary death, that the idea of approaching them in a playful spirit seems sacrilegious. We need to keep alive tackling of intellectual problems so that playful capacities can be exercised - if for no other reason (and other reasons there are, of course, aplenty). There are two really worthy impulses behind all rational inquiry: delight and compassion.

This book gives an account of work that I have done over a period of decades that sets out to solve two fundamental problems of philosophy: the mind-body problem and the problem of induction.  Remarkably, these revolutionary contributions to philosophy turn out to have dramatic implications for a wide range of issues outside philosophy itself, most notably for the capacity of humanity to resolve current grave global problems and make progress towards a better, wiser world.     

A key element of the proposed solution to the first problem is that physics is about only a highly specialized aspect of all that there is – the causally efficacious aspect.  Once this is understood, it ceases to be a mystery that natural science says nothing about the experiential aspect of reality, the colours we perceive, the inner experiences we are aware of.  That natural science is silent about the experiential aspect of reality is no reason whatsoever to holdthat the experiential does not objectively exist.

A key element of the proposed solution to the second problem is that physics, in persistently accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a substantial metaphysical assumption about the universe: it is such that a unified pattern of physical law runs through all phenomena.  We need a new conception, and kind, of physics that acknowledges, and actively seeks to improve, metaphysical presuppositions inherent in the methods of physics.  The problematic aims and methods of physics need to be improved as physics proceeds.

These are the ideas that have fruitful implications, I set out to show, for a wide range of issues: for philosophy itself, for physics, for natural science more generally, for the social sciences, for education, for the academic enterprise as a whole and, most important of all, for the capacity of humanity to learn how to solve the grave global problems that menace our future, and thus make progress to a better, wiser world.  It is not just science that has problematic aims; in life too our aims, whether personal, social or institutional, are all too often profoundly problematic, and in urgent need of improvement.  We need a new kind of academic enterprise which helps humanity put aims-and-methods improving meta-methods into practice in personal and social life, so that we may come to do better at achieving what is of value in life, and make progress towards a saner, wiser world.

This body of work of mine has met with critical acclaim.  Despite that, astonishingly, it has been ignored by mainstream philosophy.  In the book I discuss the recent work of over 100 philosophers on the mind-body problem and the metaphysics of science, and show that my earlier, highly relevant work on these issues is universally ignored, the quality of subsequent work suffering as a result.

My hope, in publishing this book, is that my fellow philosophers will cometo appreciate the intellectual value of my proposed solutions to the mind-body problem and the problem of induction, and will, as a result, join with me in attempting to convince our fellow academics that we need to bring about an intellectual/institutional revolution in academic inquiry so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to solve problems of living, including global problems, and make progress towards as good, as wise and enlightened a world as possible.

This book argues that two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of it; and learning how to become civilized. The author proposes that with the creation of modern science in the 17th century, the first problem was essentially solved.  But the second problem has still not been solved today, and that combination of solving the first problem, but failing to solve the second one, puts us in a situation of unprecedented danger.  All our current global problems are the result.  The 18th century Enlightenment tried to solve the second great problem of achieving world enlightenment by learning from the solution to the first problem, but in implementing this idea, they made three serious blunders.  These ancient blunders are still built into academia today.  Correct the three blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment, and we would have what we sourgently need: institutions of learning, universities and schools, rationally designed and devoted to helping us resolve our conflicts and global problems, and thus make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized world.  Science and Enlightenment: Two Great Problems of Learning will interest a broad audience, ranging from academics, university students and teachers; journalists, politicians and general readers concerned about global problems and the fate of the world.